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Retro RFH Tower Players’ Play Time

RFH Tower Players costumed and playing in 1977
Photo/RFH Yearbook

It’s that time of the RFH school year when all good show folk band together as Tower Players get to work on producing the spring musical. This year playing means the players are back on the RFH stage performing in Mama Mia! It’s opening on Friday. And there’s always the past … 

Back in the day, though, there was the business of auditioning for the Tower Players band of merry high school show folk first. Then there was the stressful, though typical, trial or tribulation of getting notified of whether or not you “made it” as a player, by virtue of your monologue audition, or something or other.

Then, and only then, when the newest band of Tower Players was officially formed for the school year, came the fall show and auditions for Tower Players only.

It was the RFH drama group’s form of equity acting — sort of. There were those who also didn’t pass Tower Player muster in the school auditions, but went on to get parts in community theater at The Barn and Monmouth Players, for instance. Some with the big acting bug bite did both or all three and more.

The Barn is gone, but Monmouth Players are still playing.

And, to this day, many have wondered what the decision-making criteria really was, in some cases, for the chosen ones of the RFH Tower Players … and not.

The spring musical auditions were open to all in RFH, though. The cast was inevitably bigger. There were also dance and vocal choruses. Hundreds auditioned and the competition was stiff. Back in the day, you see, everyone wanted to be in that spring musical. It always turned out to be a cast and crew of something like hundreds — or about that, really. Now, the casts are significantly smaller, with some 40 in total auditioning for Mama Mia! Still, some back in the day, of those hundreds, did not make it. Hey, that’s show biz.

Yes, it is. And Tower Players play on in a new era to a bit of a different tune …

Time to go on with the show! Right, folks? Recognize anyone in this band of merry Tower Players? Those outfits? Who knows? Only a Tower Player knows for sure …

— Elaine Van Develde

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